LETTER XVII.
Dear Charles,—Doubtless your opinion is, in the general,
correct; autobiography is interesting and valuable. But
do you really think mine would be as much so as other
men's?
I do, indeed, see in my own life incidents corroborative
of the doctrine of special providences; but a thousand circumstances
partially forgotten, and many others not suitable
to make known, are necessary to set in a clear light the
whole of the fact. And yet the conviction in my mind arose
from the whole, of which these circumstances are an essential
part. I act, however, not irrationally if that conviction
is retained as a general principle, even when the steps of the
induction may have been forgotten. Most of the grand rules
and principles regulating any man's life are, I presume, thus
retained; when the reasons for his rules and principles are,
in some cases, gone beyond recall, and in others, are very
obscurely perceived. Nay, we sometimes in trying to satisfy
ourselves and others about our principles, give very good
reasons, which yet are not the reasons precisely that led to
our adoption of the principles, although the new or modified
reasons are corroborative of the principles. Perhaps, every
good principle in its exercise, gives continual insight into the
reasons of its own existence; for if good, it must be reasonable,
and become fortified at every step.
You say, “you cannot but think I must speak from experience
myself, and that it would really be gratifying, and
no doubt instructive to hear that experience!” Dear Charles,
do you wish me to become a Congregationalist, and “give
in my experience to the church,” not in a representative but
collective capacity? Why, Charles, that experience contains
a dream; and would, no doubt, by some pure democratical
churches be regarded as a very important part. I
have no great objection to give certain incidents to you, and
through you, to “the few friends:” but these incidents must
be taken unsupported by many circumstances, and rather as
part only of the reason, fixing my conviction of a special
providence.
But what, dear friend, shall be first told? To my mind
the perpetual guardianship of Providence has been so marked,
that I feel like a witness to the truth of a remark made once
in my hearing by one of your venerable clergymen—that
“God took special care of the orphans of religious parents!”
You know my history, Charles, how I was left an orphan
in early infancy. But God so ordered that, although I never
had any legal guardian, I was most carefully instructed by
those sainted friends who acted as mothers to the deserted
child. I was by them imbued in the precious elementary
doctrines of the Christian religion. And that—mark me carefully,
Charles—that was to me a most special providence:
for that only saved me from an early perdition, and, if I ever
reach a better world, did, as an instrument, insure my home.
But how came I to receive that religious instruction?—I
think—(how can I think otherwise?) it was in answer to a
Mother's prayer!
* * * * — yes! thou hadst a crushed spirit,
my mother! Thy little ones all in their widely separated
graves! thyself brought down from the high pinnacle of this
world's grandeur to the lowly vale—a stranger far away
from thy home of the sunny South! They told me, dear
faithful Africans, in after years, how thou wouldst gush into
tears, when looking on thy sole-remaining, feeble little boy
—and pray! Oh! I see thee—a misty dream of the dim
past—yet real! I see thee—a stately form—a flowing dress
in the fashion of by-gone years! Mother!—but alas! I
should not know thee!—thy face I never learned! Yet I
have read that—
Prayer! Years ago it was mine—the
heedless child lost it—but
God lost it not—He heard and answered!
Clarence, my second mothers (they were Christ's friends)
used to make me kneel night and morning in prayer; they
carried me to the house of God; they sought in every way
to fill my mind with truth; and they did, indeed, so preoccupy
and impress my soul, that years after, as shall be presently
shown, the effect was visible. The seed was sown,
and the harvest at last came.
Those dear friends died, and I became a second time an
orphan. I became worse—a wanderer far away from God.
Alas! a wanderer, not in the ordinary sense of that term,
but I became an open reviler of religion! I went no more
to church. I ceased even from prayer! It may not be told
how very far and fast was my wandering from all goodness.
Many, Charles, have gone only half my frightful way, who
have never returned. And why? No dear mother ever
prayed for them—no special providence staid them.
You know, my friend, my passion for the theatre in early
life. Did you know, too, that I had once resolved to become
a player? And what, think you, prevented such an one as
I from turning to that unholy profession? How happened
it, that a young man of infidel sentiments, of licentious
thoughts, an habitual Sabbath-breaker, who spent that sacred
time in reading plays and practising instruments of music,
one who for years did not affect to pray even by rote, and
dared to scoff at things the most holy—how happened it, that
such a person, with strong passion for the theatre, and, as
some would say, with no mean capacity for that employment,
and after resolving to go to the managers of the theatre and
seek admission, that such an one should suddenly stop, and
far enough from being what is termed “awakened or converted,”
turn away in horror, as if from a deep and frightful
abyss?
Hear why, Charles. Down deep in his inmost heart
were dormant truths, implanted years before, which all of a
sudden waked in their energy, and said in a still small voice,
and yet powerful as God's own thunder—“Thou hast gone
to the verge of ruin away from God!—another step and return
is impossible! As yet thou hast not
sold thyself for a
price! In the theatres they act on Saturday night till Sabbath
morning; and during the Sabbath they rehearse to play
again on Monday night. Now, if thou dost deliberately take
gold, and do all this, it is
selling thy soul to hell! Forbear!
If thou dost not, return to God is
impossible!”
Did I, who had scoffed at all religion, and in such a way
as would have chilled your very blood, Charles, did I scoff
at this? And why not? Would not every infidel in the
land that should be told this scoff at it now, and regard me
as a fool?
My answer is, a mother's prayer had been recorded, and
a special and direct providence recalled the former religious
teaching of my second mothers, and made it suddenly and
irresistibly efficacious.
